SHELBURNE FALLS — Novelist Emily Arsenault of Shelburne Falls will celebrate the release of her fourth novel, “What Strange Creatures,” at Boswell’s Books with a reading and book-signing on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the bookstore at 10 Bridge St.

“Although she lives locally, she has truly become an author of national reputation as indicated by recent reviews in the New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street Journal,” said store owner Ken Eisenstein.

“This is literary mystery at its best. Arsenault writes a smart tale about a character who finds it hard to save herself, but will do anything to save her brother,” says New York Times best-selling author Jacqueline R. Sheehan.

The novel is about a bookish graduate student whose life is turned upside down after her aimless but “genius” older brother becomes the prime suspect of the murder of his girlfriend. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Arsenault’s last mystery, “Miss Me When I’m Gone,” was “Absorbing … not only a fair-play murder mystery but a novel of sweet fulfillment for the pasts of the two deceased characters and the future of their chronicler.”